Coming right up and coming to a city near you! If you live nearby these cities, or know people who do, I hope you’ll let them know about my readings. I’d love to meet all of you! TUES MAY 28TH – 7:30-8:30 pm Cleveland, Ohio Cuyahoga Public Library Berea Branch, [...]More →

My friend Kory Wells, an extraordinarily exquisite poet with her own Southern twang, tagged me to join the “Next Big Thing Blog Hop” and then I promptly forgot. That’s because I was embroiled in figuring out what my next big thing will be. I promised my editor I’d try to write another biographical novel but [...]More →

It inevitably snowed on Halloween and we had to wear coats over our costumes and boots beneath our princess dresses. Christmas was fraught with pitfalls: My Jewish father wouldn’t let us have a Christmas tree. Would my mother think a fur beret was just the thing a four year old wanted most? (She did. I [...]More →

Writing a novel about real people has an unexpected benefit: the characters may have living, breathing relatives you can actually meet. Anna Bahlmann — Edith Wharton’s governess, then secretary — was one of the two main characters in my novel, “The Age of Desire”. This week, I had the great pleasure of hosting her great [...]More →

I’ve just completed a wonderful trip across the U.S., sharing my new book, “The Age of Desire.” As I traveled, I saw some of the most striking landscapes in the United States, from the sylvan beauty of Lenox, Massachusetts — where I was so thrilled to read at Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount — to [...]More →

There are few times in one’s life that you can say, “I’ll remember this as long as I live.” Last night was one of those moments. I had the opportunity to read to a sold-out crowd on the terrace at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s beloved home. It was a glorious night with china blue early [...]More →

In less than two weeks, I’ll be reading at The Mount from my new novel, The Age of Desire, a novel about Edith Wharton’s life, and particularly the years 1907-1910 when she met and fell in love with Morton Fullerton. I can’t think of a more thrilling place to send my fragile infant out into [...]More →

We e-mail. We tweet. We text. Our messages are virtually instantaneous. But we aren’t the first to invent quick messaging. If you read my new novel, The Age of Desire, you’ll find out that back in Paris at the turn of the century, Edith Wharton stayed in contact with her lover, Morton Fullerton with what [...]More →

They must have had screened porches in Edith Wharton’s day. A quick Google search tells me that screened porches became particularly popular around 1880. And were still popular by the time Edith built The Mount. Yet, a screened porch wasn’t part of her plans. Maybe there were fewer mosquitoes up in the Berkshires in those [...]More →

As The Age of Desire inches closer to publication, people have begun to ask me, “Why write about Edith Wharton? What does a woman who wrote 100 years ago have to do with our lives now?” From the day I read the House of Mirth, I felt an emotional link to Edith. Her characters are [...]More →

Writing a novel about real people has an unexpected benefit: the characters may have living, breathing relatives you can actually meet. Anna Bahlmann — Edith Wharton’s governess, then secretary — More →